


At the End

by 2amEuphoria



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brightwell, Caroline could you get rid of these damn plot bunnies in your head, Do you see what happens when you have no self-control?, F/M, Inspired by The Lord of the Rings, Oh well you reap the rewards, The Lord of the Rings References, You write fic when you're already working on fic, smh my ADHD wins again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2amEuphoria/pseuds/2amEuphoria
Summary: She thinks for a moment. About the book, and the quote, and the boy from 1998 still trapped inside of the man she’s grown to know now.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	At the End

**Author's Note:**

> Blame @eyezofjoy. It’s her fault this plot bunny hopped into my brain last night.

She scrunches her nose with each left turn, right turn, intersection.

Did she _really_ want to go see him? Gil had said earlier that he looked fine after being exonerated of the charges brought against him. That he might finally sleep well tonight, knowing that his head wasn’t hanging over the block for something he didn’t do. Sophie Sanders had come forward and confessed to Eddie’s murder, demanded that any stains on Malcolm’s record be wiped clean. “He was as innocent when we first met as he is today.”

Dani, however, knows that it takes more than a quick lather to rinse blood off one’s hands.

____

To her surprise, the door’s unlocked. She surmises that he must’ve seen her park her car from that looming semicircular window, high above, where he’s been tucking himself away each time his mind takes him as its prisoner.

On the fourth step, she considers turning around. He’s let her inside, but perhaps not for the reason she had assumed. Because the last time they’d spoken, she’d shaken him, snapped him out of it, told him that they “couldn’t let this go.” That Endicott’s bludgeoned frame on the floor, his blood sprayed across portraits and wallpaper, couldn’t hide from a luminol test. 

That she had to arrest his sister. 

_He thinks I need to interview him,_ she realizes, _as a witness._

Her throat tightens as she tests the step behind her, wondering if her feet will carry her out of here after all. And then, the main door into his loft cracks open, hinges squeaking to beckon her in.

_Too late now._

____

He’s not at the door, but she can’t bear looking around for him, calling his name. If he appears in her sight as she walks to the kitchen island, so be it, but she can’t bring herself to track him. 

A glass of water later, she can hear the whispering of words. And then, him. On his bed, back turned to her, curled up in limp linen sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s seen better washing machines.

“Bright?” She discards her boots, slinks quietly across the hardwood floor.

He’s reading. To himself.

“Bright?” The edge of the bed halts her. Her knees press against the soft covers.

Malcolm turns, ever so slightly, strands of chestnut hair flopping over against his part. His soulless eyes meet hers.

“This was one of my favorites when I was a kid,” he says, voice blank and empty of the passion she’d come to recognize it by. “ _The Lord of the Rings._ My father read me the classics but I- I liked fantasy after he left.”

Her frame droops. He’s regressing.

But she’ll play along with it. “I never read those,” she offers, swaying on her heels. “My dad had me watch some of the movies with him when they were on TV. He always liked the trees.”

That comment garners a smile out of him, and her chest heaves with relief that his mouth can still do that. “The movies were good. I still prefer the books, though. Something about the way words can take you different places that movies can only dream of.”

She ponders a reply before he does something she’s never seen him do: jerk his shoulder towards her, a “come here” motion.

“I’m sorry,” Dani steps back. Surely he can’t mean it. “What?”

“If you’d like to sit, I’ll prove to you my point.”

____

She knows she’s not the first woman who’s been on his bed with him.

Dani remembers him mentioning to JT that while they’d slept together, he and Eve never _slept_ in the same bed. “Just to watch a movie or something, you know,” he’d shrugged, to which JT had replied “Oh yeah, bro, I Netflix and chill with Tally too. I get what you’re sayin’.”

Yet now here she was, laying atop his sheets, her body inches from his, fighting the exhaustion in her eyes as he turned page upon page beside her.

He’s always been an entertaining (or aggravating, depending on her mood) storyteller, so it’s no surprise that he’s just as skilled a reader of tales that aren’t his own. After catching her up on the plot thus far, he’d picked up where he left off in the tale, with Frodo and friends all at some place called Riverdell -“not Riverdale- I know it’s shocking to you, but not every location is inspired by the Bronx,” he’d joked, earning a witch laugh out of her that had _both_ of them in tears for a few moments. Then he’d returned to his steady, soothing reading voice, and the tears from her laughter were threatening to close her eyelids, and-

“You can sleep if you want, Dani. I’ll be up for a while.”

She picks her head up off the pillow. “I’m not” -she’s silenced by the quirk of his mouth- “okay. I’m a little tired. But I’ll head home.”

He returns her remark with a smile- acknowledging her, but sad just the same. “I’ll save your spot for you.”

She spends the drive home wondering whether he’d meant her spot in the book or his bed.

____

He’s on administrative leave for another three weeks, while they process both Sophie’s case and Ainsley’s. Gil doesn’t even have to warn him; he stays away. 

“Kinda starting to forget what the guy’s fancy-ass cologne smells like,” JT remarks to her one morning, plopping a cup of coffee on her desk as he walks over to his. “And then I smell it on _you._ ”

JT doesn’t meet her accusatory glare, just settles in his seat as he turns his computer on. “I’m not sayin’ nothin’ to the boss,” he shrugs without looking at her. “In fact, I’m not sayin’ nothin’, period.”

“I’m just checking in on him,” she says it more to herself than to her partner. “Making sure our guy’s okay.”

JT only nods once, finger across his lip as his head rests on his chin.

____

“Sam’s kinda annoying,” she posits as she steeps her tea.

He gurgles his sip in defiance. “Are we reading the same book?”

“It’s ‘Mr. Frodo’ this, ‘Mr. Frodo’ that, every time something happens- even _before_ something significant happens. He’s holding Frodo back. I think that whatever doubts Frodo already has in his mind, Sam feeds on them, makes them worse.”

Malcolm shakes his head against his mug. “I see it a different way.”

“Oh?” Dani asks, pillowing her chin in her palm.

“Sam is keeping Frodo in check, not holding him back. Looking out for the both of them while Frodo fights the pull of the Ring.” Malcolm takes another drawn-out sip, debating on how to finish his statement. “We could all use someone like Sam.”

“Is that who Vijay was for you?” She winces the second it leaves her lips. He’s been struggling enough between the two court cases he’s reluctantly a part of, and now she was bringing up his touchy past? _Damnit,_ she curses herself. _Learn to shut your mouth. He’ll keep the conversation going even if you don’t respond_ every _time._

His eyes widen for a moment, but return to ease as he sets his mug down. “Kind of. At the time, maybe. But Samwise Gamgee’s the kind of person who follows no matter what. Vijay and I grew apart. Even if we’re on decent terms now, I doubt he’d come whenever I called.”

Glancing down at her crossed arms resting in front of her, Dani nods slowly. _Just don’t say anything more,_ she thinks, _leave it at that. Let him steer the conversation next._

His voice then reaches her from his bed, book in hand: “you wanna keep going?”

She slides off the stool, her volition and tea mug left behind. “Yep, I’m coming.”

____

He doesn’t feel like reading tonight.

He’d given his witness testimony today in Sophie’s trial. His first time on the stand in this courthouse since he was a boy, testifying against his own father. This time, he testifies against the girl his father tried to kill in 1998, that he’d tried to save from this very trial months ago.

_“You were just a kid.”_ He'd told the judge, the jury, and Dani (lingering at the back of the courthouse) the meaning of her words when Sophie had explained her “justification” in killing Eddie, but it’s the meaning of _those_ words of hers that linger in his head into the night.

“She said I was ‘just a kid,’” he repeats again now to Dani, who sits at the edge of the bed beside him. Together, they watch drops fall from his freshly-showered hair.

“And you were.” She rubs his arm, worried eyes noted how he still _does_ look innocent and child-like in the clothes barely clinging to his frame.

She tracks his eyes, which find the copy of their book on the nightstand table.

“I wish the Ring had never come to me,” he quotes a passage spoken by Frodo. “I wish none of this had happened.”

She thinks for a moment. About the book, and the quote, and the boy from 1998 still trapped inside of the man she’s grown to know now.

Dani takes the novel, opens it to the bookmarked page, with the same words he’d just spoken, and finishes.

“'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.'” She clears her throat after reading, and takes his hand in her own. Slowly, she meets his gaze. “'All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.'”

____

One day, when Malcolm leaves early to attend a meeting with Ainsley’s lawyer, Gil calls her into his office.

“I kissed him.” She lets the words meet the air before he can get a word in.

“‘Kissed,’ as in past tense?” Gil bridges his fingers together, leans further back into his seat. “As in ‘just once?’”

“As in past tense, leading to the present. We’re together.”

Her lieutenant scratches his hairline, eyebrows still raised. “Well, that part I hadn’t a clue about,” Gil chuckles. “I knew _something_ was up, but I didn’t realize it was serious.” He crosses his legs out on his desk. “How long?”

“About a week, a week and a half?” Dani digs the front of her boot into the linoleum. “We didn’t want to make a scene about it at work, because of everything that’s been going on.”

He nods, a sympathetic smile forming. “Understandable. But it’s not making a scene to tell me, kid. You know I’m always here. Both of you know.”

“I know, I know.” She points her feet towards the door. “So is it alright if I head out too? I promised I’d make us dinner by the time he gets home.”

“Of course; go ahead.” He motions for her to leave. “And by the way, Dani?”

Her curls flip over her shoulder as she pauses to look back at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re seeing someone again, especially Bright. You’re as good for him as he is for you.”

A smile spreads from her lips to her eyes. “I’d rather spend one lifetime with him, than face all the edges of this world alone.” She leaves Gil to consider the origin of the quote with a wink, and trots off. 

____

“You ready?”

His shaking hand is wrapped in hers as they stand outside the courtroom, moments away from entering Ainsley’s preliminary hearing.

He forces an exhale. It’s rough, and unsteady, but he wants her to know that he’s still breathing. “Yeah,” he whispers, looking at their hands before meeting her eyes. “Yeah,” he repeats, louder, and squeezes his fingers against hers. “I think I am.”

She reaches out to open the door before he stops her, giving her a gentle tug.

“What?”

“I- I’m glad you’re here with me,” he murmurs. “Here at the end of all things, Sam.”

Her eyes glimmer with hope, with tears. “Come,” she tugs back. “Let’s go down the path, at any rate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: I haven’t read the LOTR books. I’ve seen the movies thanks to a very insistent ex who was stunned that I adored all the Hobbit movies but hadn’t yet seen the OT. And yes, I know (or rather, I assume) that Sam and Frodo aren’t romantically involved (if they are, though, I’ll gladly ship it). A “Sam” doesn’t just have to be a friend, or *just* a friend for that matter.
> 
> On that note, all quotes and characters related to LOTR belong to the books/movies/Tolkien.
> 
> I’m also assuming a lot of creative liberty when it comes to Sophie’s trial, as well as Ainsley’s here. I’m not well-versed on legal court procedures outside of true crime documentaries; forgive me. This is also likely the *one* time I mention the possibility of Ainsley going to trial, because I have a lot of feelings about that poor bby and everything that could go down next season. I’d rather just sweep that whole thing under the rug *shrugs*
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
